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Customer relationship management (CRM) software heavyweight Salesforce is expanding its investment in the Internet of Things (IoT) with the release of its IoT Explorer Edition. The company said that Explorer will help provide what it is calling the “last mile” of IoT, meaning the layer that will help customers manage and monetize their IoT devices. According to Woodson Martin, EVP and general manager of Salesforce IoT, customers want to take the data collected from IoT devices and combine that with their Salesforce customer data to drive more purchases and develop more services. “Our fundamental focus is in using the data that is coming from these platforms,” he said. Salesforce Explorer takes advantage of what Woodson refers to as “low-code” orchestration, meaning that it uses a low-code interface that doesn’t require an entire team of developers to build and maintain. Instead, businesses can create rules-based automation for all their IoT devices. This will enable things like automated workflows that can be triggered in certain predetermined circumstances.

The Explorer platform also will connect to devices, sensors, and applications allowing enterprises to add contextual data to their IoT devices that will then allow them to potentially sell more products or provide additional services. For example, by adding contextual data to sensors in vehicles, a car dealership can be notified when a connected car reaches a certain mileage threshold so it can alert the driver that the vehicle may need maintenance.

Woodson said that Salesforce Explorer is interoperable with other IoT platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) Greengrass, which helps edge devices process data and communicate with the AWS cloud. – SDX Central